Encounter

Those powerhouses renowned for their individual strength were never regarded as trump cards. The Four Emperors and Three Admirals, for instance, were still considered conventional fighting power. At most, they were called the strongest forces on the seas, never inconvenient trump cards to be used sparingly.

If Imu’s power could truly be used so easily and without any drawbacks, then the New World could never have produced the Four Emperors, much less a Pirate King. He would have beaten them to death long ago!

"So Imu hadn’t been hunting me down all this time because of this? He simply couldn’t leave Mary Geoise!"

At that thought, Yota smiled. "Looks like I can be more aggressive with my actions."

Whitebeard Pirates.

Ever since Yota left, both Yamato and Ace had become more active, eagerly seeking out battles and spending their usual days in intense training.

Though both were cheerful by nature, they also had a competitive side. Seeing Yota, whose strength had once been far below theirs, soar to new heights in such a short time naturally gave them a sense of urgency.

"Hmm… I feel like I’m improving so slowly." Ace lay sprawled on the deck, looking completely drained. "Come to think of it, it’d be nice if I were an alien too. Once I reached the right age, I could awaken my power right away."

"Aliens… I wonder if Yota can build a spaceship. I want to visit other planets." Yamato, lying beside Ace, spoke with curiosity in her eyes.

"Uh, let’s find the Final Island first… aliens and all that are just too far-fetched." Ace smacked his lips.

"Boss Ace!" Deuce, wearing a strange mask, ran over. "There’s a Marine fleet in the distance!"

"Why would the Marines come all the way to the New World?" Ace asked in surprise. While Marines were not entirely absent from the New World, they would certainly never be seen within the territories of the Four Emperors.

"Are they here for us?" Yamato immediately scrambled to her feet and swung her club. "We’re still pretty far from the other divisions!"

"Not sure, but if they really came to take advantage of us being alone, this could be a hard fight." Ace frowned.

The Marine intelligence network was not run by idiots. They surely knew how strong the two of them were. If this had been planned, then whoever had come to deal with him and Yamato had to be at least a Naval Admiral.

"Huh!? Three main battleships? Don’t tell me the Three Admirals have all come out together?"

Ace said it like a joke as he watched the fleet in the distance, but his expression gradually turned serious.

"…They wouldn’t… really have sent all Three Admirals, would they?"

Yamato, standing beside him, seemed affected by the tense atmosphere as well. "There are so many of them… How did they get here?"

"I don’t know. Maybe it’s the power of some Devil Fruit." Ace shook his head. "Otherwise, there’s no way they could have gotten this close without us noticing."

"This time, we might really have to fight for our lives!"

Meanwhile, aboard the Marine warship, Aokiji slowly pushed up his eye mask.

"Have we finally found the targets? What an annoying mission. We’re Marines, yet we have to sneak around!"

"Can’t be helped… Who told that monster to appear?" said a somewhat sleazy-looking, slightly hunched Vice Admiral.

"He flattened all of Mary Geoise and the Red Line beneath it by hundreds of meters, then blasted a passage tens of thousands of meters long through the Red Line… With that kind of strength, you have to wonder whether he’s even human!"

Aokiji fell silent. As a Naval Admiral, although he appeared lazy and mild-mannered, he was also immensely proud and confident in his own strength.

No matter what kind of opponent he faced, even the so-called Pirate King or Sea Emperors, he never thought himself inferior. They would have to fight before victory or defeat could be decided.

Until that day, when he witnessed the devastation of Mary Geoise—the horrifying hollow that pierced through the Red Line, slanting almost ten thousand meters from top to bottom.

With that kind of power, even without any Haki added to it, mere physical force alone could probably erase him outright.

After all, both his ice and Akainu’s magma possessed physical substance. If a physical attack became powerful enough, it could still wipe them out. It was just that physical attacks of that level had only ever existed in theory.

Only Kizaru’s light was truly immune to physical damage.

"What truly surprised me was the World Government," Aokiji said lazily. "They could still withstand an attack of that scale… Just how many trump cards like that does the World Government have?"

"Prying into the World Government’s affairs is no good thing." The Vice Admiral rolled his eyes. "Though we all know the World Government is rotten to the core and never does anything good, it’s still our superior no matter what."

Aokiji rolled his eyes at that. "Kake, you sound even more extreme than I did!"

"That’s different." Chaton Tokikake chuckled. "The World Government never cares if you curse it. But once you start looking into its so-called secrets, it’ll turn against you completely."

At those words, Aokiji’s expression tightened slightly, as though he had remembered something.

Kake also seemed to realize he had said the wrong thing. He hurriedly laughed it off and changed the subject. "Come on, we’ve found the targets. We should make our move first."

"Heh. It’s a little like bullying children, but what can we do? We’re Marines."

Aokiji rose from his recliner and looked toward the pirate ship in the distance. "Whitebeard Second Division. Fire Fist Ace and Ice Wolf Yamato are there, right? Catching those two will draw out Marauder Yota."

"Exactly. Otherwise, how could pirates of this level possibly require all Three Admirals to be dispatched? That would be enough to deal with the entire Whitebeard Pirates." Kake nodded.

Without wasting any more words, Aokiji took a long breath, then exhaled. Terrifying cold air instantly swept across the entire sea, turning it into a frozen continent.

Ice Age!

At the same time, Yamato in the distance transformed into her hybrid form and breathed out freezing air, forming a small icy island.

But in an instant, the entire island vanished from sight as the sea itself froze over.

"He’s amazing. His mastery of cold air is far beyond mine!" Yamato said in surprise, but she did not lose confidence.

After all, as the user of the Okuchi no Makami Fruit, cold air was only one of her methods of attack.